Letter: New prosperity

I concur with everything Lesley Riddoch said in her excellent article, "Back to the land for a lesson in sustainable living" (Perspective, 4 July), but would make the point that the arguments she makes for the long-term benefits to society and the public purse from tax support for community buy-outs in rural areas would apply equally to employee buy-outs of private companies.

This is explained by David Erdal in Beyond the Corporation, Humanity Working. Communities in which a high proportion of the population worked for employee-owned concerns evinced all the positive characteristics of more equal societies identified by Professors Wilkinson and Pickett in The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better.

Compared with communities with a low proportion of people working for such concerns, their members lived a lot longer (explained by a lower rate of cardiovascular problems due to lower stress).

They enjoyed larger and more supportive social networks, they saw political authorities as being more on their side, they believed that domestic violence was less prevalent, they gave more blood, their children stayed at school longer and did better, to a far greater extent they continued being trained and educated all their lives, and more of them voted. Most interestingly, they didn't bother buying big cars to show off their wealth, despite having higher disposable incomes. We should get off the miserable treadmill of planet-destroying, status-driven consumerism which drives so many families to be the "hard-working" variety beloved of certain politicians.

It is this sort of "joined-up" approach to policy that the Campaign for a Cross-Party Group on Real Prosperity and Joined-Up Thinking seeks to encourage in the Scottish Parliament.

Perhaps we do not need a new cross-party group (CPG) to do this. It might be sufficient if we were to catalyse joint meetings between CPGs to look at how co-ordinated, evidence-based policies can generate meaningful prosperity for the people of Scotland.

Tax concessions for community- and employee-buy-outs would undoubtedly contribute to this prosperity.

(DR) R Eric Swanepoel

Campaign for a Cross-Party Group on Real Prosperity and Joined-Up Thinking

Balmoral Place

Edinburgh